ABSTRACT
The increased participation of women in the workforce has been one of the major changes in the labour force in recent years, and it is anticipated that this trend will continue. Despite growing numbers of women in senior domestic management roles the participation rates of women in international management remains low in all countries. Adler (1995) suggests that probably the single most uncontroversial, indisputable statement one can make about women in management is that there are very few of them. Recent figures show that in the United States 18 per cent of international assignment positions are filled by women (GMAC Global Relocation Services, 2003). In Europe, the number of partaking in international assignments is even lower. During the 1980s the number of female expatriate managers remained at between 2 per cent and 5 per cent of the total expatriate population but by the late 1990s this had increased to 12-15 per cent, which is a significant increase but still less than the presence of women in management would generally warrant (Taylor et al., 2002).
